1:32 Fw 190A-8

The Anton with a bulge over the guns

The A-8 version got under way on the production lines in 1944 and became the most numerously built form of the Focke-Wulf. The BMW 801D-2 radial pulled a machine that carried a pair of heavy MG 131 guns in the fuselage; their breeches would not fit under a smooth cover and forced a conspicuous bulge, which the crews nicknamed the bulge. The wing carried four MG 151/20 cannon, so the aircraft held its own both in a fight with a fighter and in an attack on a bomber formation.

The time the set gives back

Cutting tape into strips, aligning them along every bar of the glazing and cleaning up the corners with a point can easily take two hours of concentrated work in this scale. Die-cut parts lie in place in about a quarter of an hour, because they follow the outline of the molding and nothing has to be measured.

And where you add work instead

The canopy is masked from both faces. The inner part belongs on the part before it drops into the fuselage and tends to be the more tiresome item of the evening: tweezers reach into an angled frame with difficulty and the paper readily wrinkles under a finger. Have curved-tip tweezers and a wooden point ready for pressing the edges down.

Before you reach for the airbrush

The paint wants to go on in thin coats and at low pressure. A heavy pass runs under the edge and a crisp frame turns into a smeared band. The masks are single-use; you will not lay them out for a second attempt.

Paper, not film

The carrier of this set is thin Japanese paper with a slightly elastic adhesive. Against a stiff film it can be pushed into a hollow and it follows even gently domed glass without lifting into a fold anywhere. It is precisely on rounded shapes that the difference tells: a film creates a crease there and the paint always finds its way underneath.